Over A Million SCU Hot Pepper Club

Over A Million SCU Units Club

Until the 1990s, only 2 peppers had reached the 350,000 Scoville Unit mark, the habanero and the Scotch bonnet. A hybrid variety, Red Savina Habanero won the Guinness World Record crown in 1994 measuring 570,000 Scoville Unites. That was believed to be the limit of hotness for more than a decade. Then, the Bhut Jolokia, a variety grown in Assam, India, was being studied by the Indian army for use in grenades. The Bhut Jolokia (Ghost Pepper) averaged more than one million Scoville Units, measured by high performance liquid chromatography. That opened Pandora's Box. The flood gate of record breaking hot peppers never slowed down. In February of 2012, the 2 million Scoville mark was hit by the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion. Two Million SCU's is the same strength as police-grade pepper spray.

The Scoville scale begins at zero and ends at 16 million which is pure Capsaicin. Mild bell peppers rate 200 to 700 SCU's. The Jalapeño is mid range hot pepper at about 2,500 to 5,000 SCU's. Chillies such as cayenne, aji and pequin will rate about 30,000 to 50,000 units, while the habernero is between 100,00 and 500,000 units. The Trinidad Scorpion cultivars can top the scale at over 2m Scoville units.

The Scoville Organoleptic Unit Test Wilbur Scoville lived from 1865-1942. Professor: Massachusetts College of Pharmacy (1892-1904) Wilbur Scoville is famous for his heat scale work at Park Davis, a Detroit-based pharmaceutical company, where he devised a heat scale for peppers. This test is named after him, the Scoville Organoleptic Test. Originally, Scoville ratings were based on human response to progressive dilutions. Scoville blended pure ground chiles with a sugar-water solution and a panel of testers then sipped the concoctions, in increasingly diluted concentrations. They reach a point at which the liquid no longer burned the mouth. A number was then assigned to each chile based on how much it needed to be diluted before you could taste no heat. The American Pharmaceutical Association awarded Scoville the Ebert Prize in 1922, and the Remington Honor Medal in 1929, though likely these awards had nothing to do with his eponym. Scoville Units Popular Pepper Varieties 0-100 Scoville Units includes most Bell & Sweet pepper varieties. 500-1000 Scoville Units includes New Mexican peppers. 1,000-1,500 Scoville Units includes Espanola peppers. 1,000-2,000 Scoville Units includes Ancho & Pasilla peppers. 1,000-2,500 Scoville Units includes Cascabel & Cherry peppers. 2,500-5,000 Scoville Units includes Jalapeno & Mirasol peppers. 5,000-15,000 Scoville Units includes Serrano peppers. 15,000-30,000 Scoville Units includes de Arbol peppers. 30,000-50,000 Scoville Units includes Cayenne & Tabasco peppers. 50,000-100,000 Scoville Units includes Chiltepin peppers 100,000-350,000 Scoville Units includes Scotch Bonnet & Thai peppers. 200,000 to 300,000 Scoville Units includes Habanero peppers. 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 Scoville Units includes all the world class C. chinense varieties originating mostly from a particular Trinidadian strain. 16,000,000+ Scoville Units is Pure Capsaicin. High-Performance Liquid Chromatography Test (HPLC) The validity and accuracy of the Scoville Unit test have been widely criticized. Today the High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) test is used in research sittuations. Pepper pods are dried and ground. The chemicals responsible for the pungency, capsaicin are extracted. The extract is injected into the HPLC machine for analysis. This method is more costly than the the human version. However it allows for an objective heat analysis. Not only does this method measure the total heat present, but it also gives the quantity of the different capsaicinoids. Do Hot Peppers Damage the Tongue Can very hot peppers have the potential to damage taste buds? “Not true”. Says Dr. Paul Bosland, professor of horticulture at New Mexico State University and author or several books on hot peppers. “We should think of chile heat like we do the taste of salt; easy to overdo in the moment, but not damaging to your mouth over the long term. Even the hottest habanero (100,000–350,000 on the Scoville scale), which can stay on your palate for hours — if not days – won’t wear out your tender buds.” Bosland and his colleagues have broken the heat profile of chile peppers into five distinctly different characteristics. 1) how hot it is, 2) how fast the heat comes on, 3) whether it linger or dissipates quickly, 4) where you sense the heat – on the tip of tongue, at the back of throat, etc., and 5) whether the heat registers as “flat” or “sharp.” Read more:...

Equations and Symbols

Get Up-to-Speed on Microorganisms

Soluable Salt Ranges

Keeping up on your soluble salt range is important. Always have an instrument at hand to check your nutrient levels. The below chart is a general guide as to what levels are acceptable or not.

Desireable

Permisable

Dangerous

EC

.75-2 mS

2-3 mS

3 mS & ↑

PPM

500-1300

1300-2000

2000 & ↑

Electrical Conductivity (EC) of a solution is a measure of ionic compounds dissolved in water. Organic Nutrients are ionic compounds. Another name for ionic compounds is salts. Assuming the water had very little EC before you added the liquid fertilizer, measuring the EC will tell us how much fertilizer we have in our liquid. EC is commonly measured in milli-siemens (mS) and/or Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) expressed in Parts Per Million (PPM). Both will give you the same information of how much fertilizer is in your liquid. The EC and PPM are always in relation. So stating the EC and PPM is redundant. The relationship is 1 EC (measured in mS) = 650 PPM.

About BioChar Pyrolysis

Quote from:
Daniel D. Warnock & Johannes Lehmann & Thomas W. Kuyper & Matthias C. Rillig
"Biochar is a term reserved for the plant biomass derived
materials contained within the black carbon
(BC) continuum. This definition includes chars and
charcoal, and excludes fossil fuel products or geogenic
carbon (Lehmann et al. 2006). Materials
forming the BC continuum are produced by partially
combusting (charring) carbonaceous source materials,
e.g. plant tissues (Schmidt and Noack 2000; Preston
and Schmidt 2006; Knicker 2007), and have both
natural as well as anthropogenic sources. Restricting the oxygen supply during combustion can prevent complete combustion (e.g., carbon volatilization and
ash production) of the source materials. When plant
tissues are used as raw materials for biochar production,
heat produced during combustion volatilizes a
significant portion of the hydrogen and oxygen, along
with some of the carbon contained within the plant’s
tissues (Antal and Gronli 2003; Preston and Schmidt
2006).... Depending on the temperatures
reached during combustion and the species identity
of the source material, a biochar’s chemical and
physical properties may vary (Keech et al. 2005;
Gundale and DeLuca 2006). For example, coniferous biochars generated at lower temperatures, e.g. 350°C, can contain larger amounts of available nutrients,
while having a smaller sorptive capacity for cations
than biochars generated at higher temperatures, e.g.
800°C (Gundale and DeLuca 2006). Furthermore,
plant species with many large diameter cells in their
stem tissues can lead to greater quantities of macropores
in biochar particles. Larger numbers of macropores
can for example enhance the ability of biochar
to adsorb larger molecules such as phenolic compounds
(Keech et al. 2005)."
Check out the entire report at:
Mycorrhizal Responses to Biochar in Soil–Concepts and Mechanisms"

Biochar & Fungi Relationship

Cation Exchange Capacity Information Blurb

The total CEC is impacted by these factors:
Amount of active humus such as compost, Amount of passive humus such as Biochar, The pyrolysis method of the Biochar added, Was the Biochar activated and/or inoculated? The type and amount of microorganisms, and The overall pH